Critical Studies in Media Communication

Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 125–151

From Public Sphere to Public Screen:

Democracy, Activism, and the “Violence”
of Seattle
Kevin Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples

!—The WTO protests in Seattle witnessed the emergence of an international citizens’

movement for democratic globalization. With the tactical exploitation of television, the
internet, and other technologies, Seattle also witnessed the enactment of forms of activism
adapted to a wired society. In the wake of Seattle, this essay introduces the “public screen”
as a necessary supplement to the metaphor of the public sphere for understanding today’s
political scene. While a public sphere orientation inevitably finds contemporary discourse
wanting, viewing such discourse through the prism of the public screen provokes a
consideration of new forms of participatory democracy. In comparison to the public sphere’s
privileging of rationality, embodied conversations, consensus, and civility, the public screen
highlights dissemination, images, hypermediacy, publicity, distraction, and dissent. Using
the Seattle WTO protests as a case study and focusing on the dynamic of violence and the
media, we argue that the public screen accounts for technological and cultural changes
while enabling a charting of the new conditions for rhetoric, politics, and activism.

F ROM November 30 to December

3, Seattle, high-tech capital of the
present future, became the site of a
contested New World Order as the
forces of global capital, meeting under
cover of the anonymous acronym
WTO (World Trade Organization),
were surprised by a cacophonous cadre
of international grassroots activists in a
Kevin Michael DeLuca is Assistant Professor in
the Department of Speech Communication at
the University of Georgia. Jennifer Peoples is
Assistant Professor in Languages and Philoso-
phy at Utah State University. DeLuca thanks
John Lucaites of Indiana University, Fernando
Delgado of Arizona State University West, and
their colleagues for the opportunity to present
and discuss earlier versions of this essay. Both
authors thank the editors and anonymous review-
ers for their helpful advice.
Copyright 2002, National Communication Association
pitched battle over visions of the future.
Images flashed worldwide— crowds of
thousands clogging the commercial
center of Seattle and stranding WTO
delegates in the mass of humanity; sea
turtles and hard hats linking arms and
marching together; black-clad anar-
chists trashing the material manifesta-
tions of corporate global dominance:
Starbucks, Nike Town, McDonald’s;
shaken government officials decrying
the outbreak of participatory citizen-
ship; black-booted sci-fi stormtroopers
marching in goose step and restoring
order via tear gas, rubber bullets, and
concussion grenades.
Seattle and subsequent fair trade and
democratic globalization protests 1
around the world are striking crystalli-
zations of a complex confluence of so-
cial, economic, technological, environ-
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PUBLIC SCREEN
mental, and political processes. These
protests illustrate contemporary public
acts of global citizenry that suggest new
conditions for the possibility of partici-
patory democracy in a corporate-con-
trolled mass-mediated world. Chief
among these new conditions are trans-
formed economic/political and techno-
logical realities.
First, the activists recognize transna-
tional corporations as the dominant
powers of the new millennium. Seattle
protesters pointedly smashed the win-
dows of “Nike Town.” Although corpo-
rations have been important players
for some time, they are now clearly the
dominant political, social, economic,
and environmental forces on the planet,
eclipsing the nation-state (Hardt and
Negri, 2000; Friedman, 1999; and Grei-
der, 1997). There are numerous indica-
tors of this change in sovereignty. The
wealth of a number of companies ex-
ceeds that of many nations. For ex-
ample, as of 1999 Microsoft’s market
value was equivalent to the gross do-
mestic product of Spain, GE’s to Thai-
land, Wal-Mart’s to Argentina, and
Hewlett-Packard’s to Greece (Morgen-
son, 2000). The laws of countries are
struck down if they impede free trade
(“Behind the Hubbub in Seattle,” 1999;
“Messages for the W.T.O.,” 1999). In
the United States the defense industry
de facto sets budget priorities and mili-
tary policy, so that the collapse of the
Soviet Union hardly impacts defense
spending and citizens are left to won-
der whatever happened to the “peace
dividend” (Center for Defense Informa-
tion, www.cdi.org).
Corporate control of our democratic
government’s policies is evident on
many other issues. With respect to en-
vironmental issues, strong pro-environ-
mental sentiments among the general
populace (Dunlap, 2000) are trumped
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by corporate prerogatives, with the lob-
byists of industry dictating environmen-
tal legislation. In a recent example,
Enron founder Kenneth Lay had pri-
vate meetings with the Bush Adminis-
tration to help formulate an energy
policy with extensive environmental
implications (Slocum, 2001; Milbank
and Kessler, 2002; Rich, 2002). Even
science, reputedly the last redoubt of
objectivity and pure knowledge, is
funded and circumscribed by corpo-
rate desire. Swiss pharmaceutical giant
and biotech pioneer Novartis literally
underwrites the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley Department of Plant and
Microbial Biology. UCal, Berkeley also
has the BankAmerica Dean of the Haas
School of Business. The controversial
mining company Freeport McMoran
funds a chair in environmental studies
at Tulane University. Conservative me-
dia mogul Walter Annenberg bank-
rolls the Annenberg Schools of Com-
munication at the University of
Pennsylvania and University of South-
ern California. University of Pennsylva-
nia’s Center for Bioethics is sponsored
by Monsanto, de Code Genetics, Mil-
lennium Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, and
Geron Corporation (Press and Wash-
burn, 2000; Gelbspan, 1997; Elliott,
2001). In short, from environmental
regulation on the local and global level
to university research agendas, corpo-
rate interests are inextricably entwined
in “public” activities, a process that
sociologist Boggs terms “corporate
colonization”—the “increased corpo-
rate penetration into virtually every
corner of modern American life” (2000,
p. 9).
Second, global democratization and
fair trade activists recognize the TV
screen as the contemporary shape of
the public sphere and the image event
designed for mass media dissemina-

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tion as an important contemporary
form of citizen participation. Aside
from writing letters to political repre-
sentatives, attending public forums, and
voting, the activists acknowledge the
imperative to appear on the television
screen alongside the staged image
events of governments and corpora-
tions. In the case of Seattle, the protest-
ers realized the need to contest the
WTO meeting as a crowning image
event for President Clinton and free
trade. In staging a competing image
event, the activists enacted what has
become a fact among media scholars:
“A media culture has emerged in which
images, sounds, and spectacles help
produce the fabric of everyday life,
dominating leisure time, shaping politi-
cal views and social behavior, and pro-
viding the materials out of which
people forge their very identities” (Kell-
ner, 1995, p. 1).
In recognizing the dominance of cor-
porations and new technologies, the
activists acknowledge the change in
sovereignty on the world stage and
enact a transformation of citizen partici-
pation. The purpose of this essay will
be to discuss and delineate those
changes and their consequences for
the public sphere and participatory de-
mocracy. More specifically, this essay
will introduce the “public screen” as a
necessary supplement to the metaphor
of the public sphere for understanding
today’s political scene. The concept of
the public screen enables scholars to
account for the technological and cul-
tural changes of the 20th Century,
changes that have transformed the rules
and roles of participatory democracy.
Our introduction of the public screen
is an act infused with hope. The writ-
ings of many critics of public discourse
are wracked with despair over the state
of contemporary politics and culture.
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DELUCA AND PEEPLES
Boggs’s judgment is typical: “As the
twenty-first century dawns, American
politics is in an increasingly pathetic
condition. . . . Measured by virtually
any set of criteria, the political system
is in a (potentially terminal) state of
entropy. . . . the deterioration of the
public sphere has potentially devastat-
ing consequences for citizen empower-
ment and social change, not to men-
tion the more general health of the
political domain itself” (2000, pp. 1,
vii). Decline is not the only possible
narrative. Viewing contemporary pub-
lic discourse through the prism of the
public screen provokes a consideration
of the emergence of new forms of par-
ticipatory democracy. In what follows,
we present an overview and criticism
of the public sphere, introduce the char-
acteristics of the public screen, and
then treat the “violent” Seattle protests
as a case study of participatory politics
on the public screen.
From Public Sphere to
Public Screen
The public sphere is ubiquitous in
contemporary social theory. The most
cursory of searches turns up a plethora
of titles trumpeting its presence: The
Black Public Sphere; Masses, Classes, and
the Public Sphere; America’s Congress: Ac-
tions in the Public Sphere, James Madison
through Newt Gingrich; Uncivil Rites:
American Fiction, Religion, and the Public
Sphere; The Public Sphere in Muslim Soci-
eties; Hindu Public Sphere; Spaces of their
Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transna-
tional China; From Handel to Hendrix:
The Composer in the Public Sphere, and
Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and
the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Cen-
tury United States. Despite this bewilder-
ing array of permutations, the initial
conceptualization of the public sphere
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PUBLIC SCREEN
had a certain focused coherence. Inau-
gurated by Jürgen Habermas’s Struc-
tural Transformation of the Public Sphere,
ideally the public sphere denotes a
social space wherein private citizens
gather as a public body with the rights
of assembly, association, and expres-
sion in order to form public opinion.2
The public sphere mediates between
civil society and the state, with the
expression of public opinion working
to both legitimate and check the power
of the state. This public opinion is de-
cidedly rational: “the critical judgment
of a public making use of its reason”
(Habermas, 1989, p. 24). The public
sphere assumes open access, the brack-
eting of social inequalities, rational dis-
cussion, focus on common issues, face-
to-face conversation as the privileged
medium, and the ability to achieve
consensus. It is important to remember
that Habermas’s book was an histori-
cal study of the rise of the bourgeois
public sphere and its decline in late
capitalist society. Habermas laments
the passing of the bourgeoisie public
sphere and the rise of mass media spec-
tacles, a turn of events he sees as the
disintegration or refeudalization of the
public sphere—a return to the spectacle
of the Middle Ages. He argues that the
activity of the public sphere has been
replaced with consumerism: “Rational-
critical debate had a tendency to be
replaced by consumption, and the web
of public communication unraveled
into acts of individuated reception,
however uniform in mode” (1989, p.
163).
Despite its unfortunate historical fate,
the public sphere has become a vital
concept for social theory, with two takes
predominating: uncritical acceptance
and critical acceptance. The former
position involves the taking-for-granted
of an unexamined public sphere and
JUNE 2002
importing it uncritically for contempo-
rary social theory (as is suggested by its
promiscuous use in the above list of
titles). The latter position is of more
interest to us. It involves the curious
dynamic of subjecting the public sphere
to scathing criticisms, but then declar-
ing it to be absolutely necessary. Mi-
chael Schudson, for example, who sug-
gests that at least in America there has
never been a public sphere, neverthe-
less concludes, “I find the concept of a
public sphere indispensable as a model
of what a good society should achieve.
It seems to me a central notion for
social or political theory” (1992, p. 160).
The position, then, is that Habermas’s
conceptualization and history of the
public sphere has many flaws, fore-
most among them his privileging of
dialogue and fetishization of a proce-
dural rationality at the heart of the
public sphere. These flaws produce an
exclusionary and impoverished norma-
tive ideal that shuns much of the rich-
ness and turbulence of the sense-mak-
ing process; still, the concept of the
public sphere remains essential. As
Nancy Fraser argues in a 33-page essay
detailing the flaws of the public sphere,
“something like Habermas’s idea of
the public sphere is indispensable to
critical social theory and democratic
political practice” (1992, p. 111). Ken-
dall Phillips reenacts this dynamic,
making a compelling argument that
the public sphere’s privileging of con-
sensus silences dissent and condemns
resistance, yet insisting that “a whole-
sale rejection of the public sphere or
consensus seems little better than blind
faith in the exemplar and its founda-
tion” (1996, p. 233; for useful criticisms
of the public sphere, see Curran, 1991;
Eley, 1992; McLaughlin, 1993; Pate-
man, 1988; Peters, 1993; and Ryan,
1992).

CSMC
Still, is it wise to retain the concept
of the public sphere for a televisual
world characterized by image and spec-
tacle? Habermas suggests not, finding
“the world fashioned by the mass me-
dia is a public sphere in appearance
only” (1989, p. 171). Although not ad-
vocating wholesale rejection, we think
the public sphere needs a supplement.
Before introducing the public screen,
we want to elaborate on our reasons
for supplementing the concept of the
public sphere.
Our reservations revolve around the
power of terms to shape and confine
thinking. Certainly, the public sphere
evokes echoes of ancient Greece. In so
many ways, the small city-state of Ath-
ens has stunted the Western imagina-
tion, especially with respect to what
constitutes political activity and citizen-
ship. In evoking ancient Athens, the
public sphere evokes a particular vi-
sion of politics. The Athenian agora
models our metaphoric marketplace of
ideas, an open and diverse (though not
in terms of class and gender) space of
multiple activities, including trade,
laws, entertainment, and politics. As
cultural historian Richard Sennett
notes, it was a space of “ ‘sword-swal-
lowers, jugglers, beggars, parasites, and
fishmongers . . . [and] philosophers.
. . . The evolution of Athenian democ-
racy shaped the surfaces and the vol-
ume of the agora, for the movement
possible in simultaneous space served
participatory democracy well. By stroll-
ing from group to group, a person
could find out what was happening in
the city and discuss it” (1994, pp. 54 –
55).
The Pynx, Athens’ theater of democ-
racy, calls forth our attachments to the
New England town meeting on the
village square or the public forum. A
sloped, bowl-shaped theater, literally
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DELUCA AND PEEPLES
“a place for seeing,” the architecture of
the Pynx amplified the one voice ad-
dressing a seated, captive audience (the
structure functioned as a stone micro-
phone, if you will). It was a democratic
space in that any citizen could answer
the herald’s call, “Who wishes to
speak?”, yet unlike in the agora, the
theater amplified the power of the voice
of the speaker. “Yet the Pynx, whose
clear design emphasized the serious-
ness of attending to words, put the
people literally in a vulnerable posi-
tion. Rhetoric constituted the tech-
niques for generating verbal heat.
. . . This body-art deployed ‘tropes,’ or
figures of speech, in such a way that a
mass of people could become aroused”
(Sennett, 1994, pp. 66, 63).
Despite the significant differences in
methods and purposes of the agora
and Pynx, we want to underline that
they both privilege words in the form
of embodied voices. Contemporary
techno-industrial culture shares that
privileging. When people imagine the
ideal public sphere as the seat of civic
life, the soul of participatory democ-
racy, whether it be the marketplace of
ideas wherein multiple knots of private
conversations in coffee houses and sa-
lons add up to a public, or town meet-
ings wherein anyone can say his or her
piece, the public sphere is imagined as
a place of embodied voices, of people
talking to each other, of conversation.
This is a deep impulse and a beautiful
dream and it is endemic to our vision
of the public sphere, of democracy, of
even communication itself. This is evi-
dent in our televised presidential elec-
tion town meetings, wherein the “live”
audience in the room makes the event
authentic, real. John Dewey imagined
the primordial act of communication
as two people sitting on a log, face-to-
face, talking. As Habermas puts it, “A
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PUBLIC SCREEN
portion of the public sphere comes
into being in every conversation in
which private individuals assemble to
form a public body” (1974, p. 49). Even
the postmodern prophet of simulacra,
Jean Baudrillard, falls under the spell
of bodily presence. In remarking on
the 1968 protests in France, he cri-
tiques the mass media as transmission
systems at a distance and praises post-
ers and notices printed on walls as
immediate and thus the “real revolu-
tionary media . . . everything that was
an immediate inscription, given and re-
turned, spoken and answered, mobile
in the same space and time, reciprocal
and antagonistic” (1972/1981, p. 176).
Baudrillard’s emphasis on immediacy,
the spoken and answered, idealizes the
face-to-face encounter and privileges
such speech as authentic. The Baudril-
lard example is compelling in that he
discusses written forms of communica-
tion as if they were spoken. Posters and
notices are “spoken and answered.”
They are better than mass media be-
cause they are not distant but immedi-
ate, like speech. Similarly, although
the public sphere includes written
forms of communication, embodied
conversation functions as the ideal
baseline. Yet the dream of the public
sphere as the engagement of embodied
voices, democracy via dialogue, clois-
ters us, for perforce its vision compels
us to see the contemporary landscape
of mass communication as a night-
mare.
If envisioning a public sphere of em-
bodied voices makes sense within the
Western imaginary, Jacques Derrida
and John Peters gift us with a second
seeing of our situation. Much of Derri-
da’s work traces and deconstructs the
privileging of face-to-face speech in the
history of Western thought, what he
terms a “logocentrism which is also a
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phonocentrism: absolute proximity of
voice and being, of voice and the mean-
ing of being, of voice and the ideality
of meaning” (1976, pp. 11–12). Peters,
in his history of communication as “a
registry of modern longings” (1999, p.
2), traces and critiques a similar history
of the privileging of presence, of “the
dream of communication as the mu-
tual communion of souls” (1999, p. 1;
see also Schudson, 1997). As Peters
notes, “dialogue has attained some-
thing of a holy status. It is held up as
the summit of human encounter, the
essence of liberal education, and the
medium of participatory democracy”
(1999, p. 33). Both Derrida and Peters
offer dissemination as the primordial
form of communication, the first turn
before dialogue. Their point, an insight
highlighted in an age of mass commu-
nication, is that communication/trans-
mission/reception/meaning/under-
standing/ communion may never
happen, “that a letter can always not
arrive at its destination, and therefore
it never arrives. And this is really
how it is, it is not a misfortune, that’s
life, living life” (Derrida, 1987, p. 33).
In counterpoint to a public sphere
underwritten by consensus through
communication or communion via
conversation, dissemination reminds
us that all forms of communication
are founded on the risk of not commu-
nicating.
Taking dissemination rather than
dialogue as characteristic of contempo-
rary communication practices, then,
necessarily alters the trajectory of our
thinking about politics and society. The
public screen is an accounting that starts
from the premise of dissemination, of
broadcasting. Communication as char-
acterized by dissemination is the
endless proliferation and scattering of
emissions without the guarantee of pro-

CSMC
ductive exchanges. Peters cites the
parables of Jesus as the paradigmatic
example of dissemination in order to
suggest that dissemination offers a
model of communication that is more
democratic, open, public, equitable, re-
ceiver-oriented, and in tune with hu-
manity’s multiple communication prac-
tices (1999, pp. 35, 51–59, 267– 68). As
Peters concludes,
Dialogue still reigns supreme in the imagi-
nation of many as to what good communi-
cation might be, but dissemination repre-
sents a saner choice for our fundamental
term. Dissemination is far friendlier to the
weirdly diverse practices we signifying ani-
mals engage in and to our bumbling at-
tempts to meet others with some fairness
and kindness. Open scatter is more funda-
mental than coupled sharing; it is the stuff
from which, on rare, splendid occasions,
dialogue may arise. Dissemination is not
wreckage; it is our lot. (1999, p. 62)
In short, although an historically and
culturally understandable desire, the
fondness for bodily presence and face-
to-face conversations ignores the social
and technological transformations of
the 20th century that have constructed
an altogether different cultural context,
a techno-epistemic break. The preced-
ing few pages were meant to suggest
the limitations of the public sphere as a
guiding metaphor for social theory be-
cause it holds static notions of the pub-
lic arena, appropriate political activity,
and democratic citizenship, thus ignor-
ing current social and technological
conditions. Further, as a normative
ideal, the public sphere promotes as
unquestioned universal goods several
deeply problematic notions: consen-
sus, openness, dialogue, rationality, and
civility/decorum. As a supplement, we
want to introduce the public screen as
a metaphor for thinking about the
places of politics and the possibilities
of citizenship in our present moment.
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DELUCA AND PEEPLES
Remediation, Hypermediacy, and Images
The public screen. Such a concept
takes technology seriously. It recog-
nizes that most, and the most impor-
tant, public discussions take place via
“screens”—television, computer, and the
front page of newspapers. Further, its
suggests that we cannot simply adopt
the term “public sphere” and all it
entails, a term indebted to orality and
print, for the current screen age. The
new term takes seriously the work of
media theorists suggesting that new
technologies introduce new forms of
social organization and new modes of
perception.
Our starting premise, then, is that
television and the Internet in concert
have fundamentally transformed the
media matrix that constitutes our so-
cial milieu, producing new forms of
social organization and new modes of
perception. As art historian W.J.T.
Mitchell suggests, “The difference be-
tween a culture of reading and a cul-
ture of spectatorship, for instance, is
not only a formal issue; it has implica-
tions for the very forms that sociability
and subjectivity take, for the kinds of
individuals and institutions formed by
a culture” (1995, p. 3). These implica-
tions can be extrapolated both forward
to the Internet and back to the ava-
lanche of communication technologies
of the 19th and 20th centuries, espe-
cially photography, telegraph, tele-
phone, radio, and film.
These technologies have intensified
the speed of communication and oblit-
erated space as a barrier to communica-
tion (Kern, 1983; Carey, 1989). They
physically shrink the world while simul-
taneously mentally expanding it, pro-
ducing a vast expansion of geographi-
cal consciousness. Thoreau’s caustic
comments about the telegraph have
come true. We know and care when
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PUBLIC SCREEN
Princess Di has a car crash. Texas may
not have much to say to Maine, but it is
transmitted nevertheless. Further, seg-
regated space is breached, flattening
multiple forms of hierarchy (Meyro-
witz, 1985). As media scholar Ian An-
gus explains, “Media of communica-
tion constitute primal scenes, a complex
of which defines the culture of a given
place and time, an Epoch of Being”
(2000, p. 190).
This quotation warrants elaboration.
Angus is stating that at any historical
moment a plurality of media coexist
and interact. This point, suggested
by McLuhan’s observation that “the
‘content’ of any medium is always an-
other medium” (1964, p. 23), is use-
fully extended by Bolter and Grusin’s
discussions of remediation and hyper-
mediacy. Remediation is “the represen-
tation of one medium in another”
(1999, p. 45) and examples include
computer games like Myst or Doom that
remediate photography and film or web
sites that remediate television. Impor-
tantly, Bolter and Grusin argue that
remediation is not a linear process and
that “older media can also remediate
newer ones” (1999, p. 55). For ex-
ample, newspapers like USA Today re-
mediate both television and the Win-
dows layout of computer screens.
Remediation is closely linked to the
logic of hypermediacy: “contempo-
rary hypermediacy offers a heteroge-
neous space, in which representation is
conceived of not as a window on to the
world, but rather as ‘windowed’ itself–
with windows that open on to other
representations or other media. The
logic of hypermediacy multiplies the
signs of mediation” (Bolter and Grusin,
1999, p. 34).
The notions of remediation and hy-
permediacy are crucial to our discus-
sion of the public screen, for when we
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discuss the public screen primarily
through television and newspaper ex-
amples, it is with three understandings.
First, TV is never simply TV, but a
medium immersed in the process of
remediations among multiple media.
Second, the public screen is a scene of
hypermediacy. Third, at a meta-level,
remediation provides a frame for con-
ceptualizing the relation between the
public sphere and the public screen.
The latter neither simply succeeds the
former nor are they utterly distinct are-
nas. Rather, the public screen and the
public sphere exist in a dialectic of
remediation. To herald the emergence
of the public screen is not to announce
the death of the public sphere, though
it may suggest its eclipse.
Angus, in making the now common
observation that media do not merely
transmit information and represent re-
ality but fundamentally constitute it,
goes one step further. Yes, media pro-
duce culture, but they are also the pri-
mal scene upon which culture is pro-
duced and enacted. In other words, in
techno-industrial culture media be-
come the ground of Being. To push
this point, media are not mere means
of communicating in a public sphere
or on a public screen; media produce
the public sphere and public screen as
primal scenes of Being. Particular con-
figurations of media institute the scene
or open the spaces from which episte-
mologies and ontologies emerge.
Today’s scene is predominantly a
visual one. TV trades in a discourse
dominated by images not words, a vi-
sual rhetoric. In our television culture,
we are experiencing a shift from Rorty’s
“linguistic turn” to what Mitchell terms
a “pictorial turn” (1995, p. 11). TV’s
imagistic discourse has become so
dominant that even newspapers can
do no better than imitate TV, moving

CSMC
to shorter stories and color graphics.
The epitome of this trend is the na-
tional newspaper, USA Today, but even
the grey New York Times now prints
color photographs on the front page. If
we take remediation seriously, Susan
Sontag’s observations on photography
are also illuminating with respect to
the ceaseless circulation of images in
our media matrix: “Industrial societies
turn their citizens into image-junkies.
. . . turn experience itself into a way of
seeing. . . . an event has come to mean,
precisely, something worth photo-
graphing,” something that has appeared
on the public screen (1977, pp. 24,
18 –19). Baudrillard pushes this point:
“Photography brings the world into
action (acts out the world, is the world’s
act) and the world steps into the photo-
graphic act (acts out photography, is
photography’s act)” (2000, p. 3). These
comments are suggestive for thinking
about a public discourse of images.
John Hartley’s provocative analysis of
the politics of pictures more explicitly
gets at the transition from public sphere
to public screen. Hartley suggests that
there is no real public, but, rather that
the public is the product of publicity,
of pictures. The public’s fictional sta-
tus, however, should not be “taken as a
disqualification from but as a demon-
stration of the social power (even truth)
of fictions” (Hartley, 1992, p. 84). Im-
ages, then, are important not because
they represent reality but create it:
“They are the place where collective
social action, individual identity and
symbolic imagination meet—the nexus
between culture and politics” (Hartley,
1992, p. 3).
Transforming Publicity
So what do these technological trans-
formations portend for democracy?
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DELUCA AND PEEPLES
Advocates of the public sphere often
criticize the contemporary political
imagescape by evoking the fullness of
the public sphere ideal and a past
golden age. Michael Schudson cites a
representative example:
Christopher Lasch, for instance, bemoans
“the transformation of politics from a cen-
tral component of popular culture into a
spectator sport.” What once existed but
has been lost, in Lasch’s view, is “the oppor-
tunity to exercise the virtues associated
with deliberation and participation in pub-
lic debate.” What we are seeing is “the
atrophy of these virtues in the common
people—judgment, prudence, eloquence,
courage, self-reliance, resourcefulness, com-
mon sense.” (1992, p. 142)
Of course, Lasch’s position suggests
that our fall from grace could be recti-
fied by a collective act of will. Studying
media suggests not. New technologies
have transformed our social context,
generating new forms of social organi-
zation and new modes of perception.
TV places a premium on images over
words, emotions over rationality, speed
over reflection, distraction over delib-
eration, slogans over arguments, the
glance over the gaze, appearance over
truth, the present over the past.
Yet even theorists aware of the struc-
tural transformations introduced by
technologies fall into Lasch’s reaction-
ary pose. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, af-
ter skillfully explaining how TV has
rendered traditional public address ob-
solete, concludes that we need more
occasions for traditional public address
(1988, pp. 238 –255). Neil Postman, in
his book Amusing Ourselves to Death
(1985), understands the new context
but tips his hand with his title and
frames his discussion in terms of the
loss of the pre-TV golden age of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates [Schudson
nicely explodes that myth (1992)].
These critics base their critiques on
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PUBLIC SCREEN
the assumption of an idealized public
sphere predicated on rationality, face-
to-face talk, consensus, equality, con-
templation, and the bracketing of
power relations. Such a frame unneces-
sarily limits understanding of the possi-
bilities of participatory politics in a
mass-mediated society. Technological
and social changes have produced the
public screen. For a cultural critic, the
key response to the structural transfor-
mations of our moment is neither to
adopt a moral pose nor to express
yearnings for a mythical past, but to
explore what is happening and what is
possible under current conditions. If
embodied gatherings of culturally ho-
mogenous, equal citizens engaged in
rational dialogue with the goal of con-
sensus is no longer a dominant mode
of political activity, what constitutes
politics today? One answer is the pub-
lic screen. Groups perform image
events (DeLuca, 1999) for dissemina-
tion via corporate-owned mass media
that display an unceasing flow of im-
ages and entertainment. Although to-
day’s televisual public screen is not
the liberal public sphere of which
Habermas dreams, wherein a rational
public through deliberative discussion
achieves public opinion, neither is it
the medieval public sphere of represen-
tative publicity that Habermas fears, a
site where rulers stage their status in
the form of spectacles before the ruled.
Rather, on today’s public screen corpo-
rations and states stage spectacles (ad-
vertising and photo ops) certifying their
status before the people/public and ac-
tivists participate through the perfor-
mance of image events, employing the
consequent publicity as a social me-
dium for forming public opinion and
holding corporations and states ac-
countable. Critique through spectacle,
not critique versus spectacle. Green-
JUNE 2002
peace’s image fare against Soviet and
Japanese whalers (DeLuca, 1999), col-
lege students’ shantytown campaign
against corporate and institutional in-
vestment in apartheid South Africa
(Williams, 1986), and Act Up’s in-your-
face activism against AIDS indiffer-
ence (DeParle, 1990) attest to the possi-
bilities of such practices.
Note that the public screen contains
a shift in the function of public opin-
ion. In Habermas’s public sphere, pub-
lic opinion is designed to criticize and
control the power of the state. As al-
ready argued, in the present historical
moment corporations have eclipsed na-
tion-states in many respects as the
dominant players on the world scene.
For Habermas, the rise of corporations
has corrupted the public sphere:
“Public opinion” takes on a different mean-
ing depending on whether it is brought
into play as a critical authority in connec-
tion with the normative mandate that the
exercise of political and social power be
subject to publicity or as the object to be
molded in connection with a staged dis-
play of, and manipulative propagation of,
publicity in the service of persons and
institutions, consumer goods, and pro-
grams. (1989, p. 236)
Although not disagreeing with
Habermas’s account, we think it is only
partial and neglects the opportunities
the public screen engenders for citi-
zens to hold corporations accountable.
The publicity activists generate via the
public screen is just as often directed
toward corporations as toward govern-
ments. Given the importance of image
on the public screen, even powerful
corporations are vulnerable to image-
fare and must be protective of their
public image (for examples, see Beder,
1997; Greider, 1992). A compelling
recent example has been the campaign
against sweatshop labor. Activists,

CSMC
many of them college students, have
used the public screen to generate pub-
lic opinion against the use of sweat-
shop labor by global corporations, in-
cluding Nike, Wal-Mart, and the GAP
(Gourevitch, 2001; the major groups in
this effort are United Students Against
Sweatshops, the National Labor Com-
mittee, the Fair Labor Association, and
the Worker Rights Consortium).
Image Events in a Time of Distraction
The public screen is a constant cur-
rent of images and words, a ceaseless
circulation abetted by the technologies
of television, film, photography, and
the Internet. These technologies’ speed,
stream of images, and global reach
create an ahistorical, contextless flow
of jarring juxtapositions. The public
screen promotes a mode of perception
that could best be characterized as “dis-
traction.” The public sphere, in privi-
leging rational argument, assumed a
mode of perception characterized by
concentration, attention, and focus.
German social theorists contemplating
the effects of film, radio, photography,
and urbanism recognized the emer-
gence of a new mode of perception.
Horkheimer and Adorno lamented the
effects of film,
Real life is becoming indistinguishable from
the movies. The sound film, far surpassing
the theater of illusion, leaves no room for
imagination or reflection on the part of the
audience, who is unable to respond within
the structure of the film. . . . They are so
designed that quickness, powers of observa-
tion, and experience are undeniably
needed to apprehend them at all; yet sus-
tained thought is out of the question if the
spectator is not to miss the relentless rush
of facts. (1972, pp. 126 –127)
Observing the state of middle-class
Germany amidst the new technologies
135
DELUCA AND PEEPLES
and the culture industry in the 1920s
and 30s, Siegfried Kracauer wrote of
people living in a state of distraction:
“Society does not stop the urge to live
amid glamour and distraction, but en-
courages it wherever and however it
can” (1998, pp. 89).
Eschewing mere judgment, Walter
Benjamin sought to understand distrac-
tion as the mode of perception most
appropriate to the technologically
transformed conditions of the 20th cen-
tury. Benjamin conceived of the audi-
ence as “a collectivity in a state of
distraction” and asserted that “the tasks
which face the human apparatus of
perception at the turning points of his-
tory cannot be solved by optical means,
that is, by contemplation, alone. They
are mastered gradually by habit, under
the guidance of tactile appropriation”
(1968, pp. 232, 233). Benjamin is sug-
gesting that the focused gaze has been
displaced by the distracted look of the
optical unconscious, the glance of habit,
which is tactile in the sense that one is
not an observer gazing from a critical
distance, but an actor immersed in a
sea of imagery, a self pressed upon by
the play of images and driven to distrac-
tion to survive. The self utilizes “a way
of looking and experiencing the world
in which the eye does not act to hold
external objects in a firm contempla-
tive gaze, but only notices them in
passing and while also keeping a series
of other objects in view” (Latham, 1999,
p. 463; see also Abbas, 1996).
The key point is that these theorists
understand distraction not as a lack of
attention but as a necessary form of
perception when immersed in the tech-
nologically induced torrent of images
and information that constitutes public
discourse in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Speed and images, singly and in con-
cert, annihilate contemplation. Al-
136
PUBLIC SCREEN
though distraction and the glance are
antithetical to the public sphere and
were read negatively by theorists such
as Horkheimer, Adorno, and Kracauer
as signs of the decline of civilization,
the dialectic of Enlightenment, we sug-
gest that they be read not morally but
analytically as signs of the emergence
of a new space for discourse, the public
screen, that entails different forms of
intelligence and knowledge.
Given that in modern industrial soci-
ety people “directly know only tiny
regions of social life” and that of “all
the institutions of daily life, the media
specialize in orchestrating everyday
consciousness. . . . They name the
world’s parts, they certify reality as
reality” (Gitlin, 1980, pp. 1–2), the pub-
lic screen is an unavoidable place of
politics. As Gronbeck bluntly puts it,
“The telespectacle, for better or worse,
is the center of public politics, of the
public sphere. . . . we must recognize
that the conversation of the culture is
centered not in the New York Review of
Books but in the television experience”
(1995, p. 235). Citizens who want to
appear on the public screen, who want
to act on the stage of participatory
democracy, face three major condi-
tions that both constrain and enable
their actions: 1) private ownership/
monopoly of the public screen, 2) Info-
tainment conventions that filter what
counts as news, and 3) the need to
communicate in the discourse of im-
ages.
These are formidable constraints; yet
they are also rich opportunities. Yes,
ownership often restricts content that
is against the interests of the transna-
tional corporations that own and adver-
tise on the media. Yes, the fact that
private companies driven by profits
own the media restricts access for citi-
zens and most activist groups that sim-
JUNE 2002
ply cannot afford to buy time (Mc-
Chesney, 1999). Yes, the visual bias of
TV works against those deploying tra-
ditional, word-based forms of argu-
ment. Still, there are opportunities.
First, the need for media companies to
be competitive and attract audiences
opens up the public screen to stories
beyond the narrow ideological inter-
ests of transnational capital. Further,
although certain news conventions
work against activist groups, others,
most notably the emphasis on the new,
drama, conflict, objectivity, and com-
pelling visuals, open up the public
screen. Finally, TV amplifies voices,
enabling one person (Dr. Kevorkian)
or small groups to communicate to
millions via the public screen.
This understanding of mass media
has translated into a practice of staging
image events for dissemination. In a
book written shortly before Green-
peace’s first image event, early Green-
peace Director Robert Hunter argued
that the mass media provide a delivery
system for image events that explode
“in the public’s consciousness to trans-
form the way people view their world”
(1971, p. 22). As fellow activist Paul
Watson elaborated, “The more dra-
matic you can make it, the more contro-
versial it is, the more publicity you will
get. . . . The drama translates into expo-
sure. Then you tie the message into
that exposure and fire it into the brains
of millions of people in the process”
(quoted in Scarce, 1990, p. 104).
Greenpeace is an early example of a
group lacking organization, resources,
and a large membership deploying dra-
matic visuals and an understanding of
the public screen to achieve astonish-
ing successes. The fair trade/demo-
cratic globalization protests provide a
contemporary opportunity to study the
possibilities and consequences of the

CSMC
public screen. The Seattle WTO pro-
tests provide a particularly rich ex-
ample, in part because the public screen
is more developed and complex than it
was in the 1970s and in part because
Seattle was a contested image event
wherein several groups competed over
its meaning: the Clinton Administra-
tion, corporate sponsors, peaceful pro-
testers, uncivil disobedience activists,
and anarchists. Further, a key compo-
nent of Seattle was violence (in various
forms), a type of “communication” a
priori ruled out of the public sphere. In
part, then, our analysis will focus on
violence and how it works on the pub-
lic screen.
The Battle in Seattle:
The Uses of Violence
There are so many legal precautions against
violence, and our upbringing is directed
towards so weakening our tendencies to-
ward violence, that we are instinctively
inclined to think that any act of violence is
a manifestation of a return to barbarism.
. . . almost uninterruptedly since the eigh-
teenth century, economists have been in
favour of strong central authorities, and
have troubled little about political liberties.
It may be questioned whether there is not a
little stupidity in the admiration of our
contemporaries for gentle methods.
—Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence
Violence is never an appropriate way to
settle differences. I know that the violence
comes from a tiny segment who through
such actions detract from those who have
come there to constructively protest. The
World Trade Organization has sought in
recent years to expand its contacts with
people from all segments of society. Our
efforts at transparency have not been per-
fect. More work needs to be done. But
progress in this area can only be made
through constructive dialogue.
—Mike Moore, Director-General,
World Trade Organization
137
DELUCA AND PEEPLES
A little broken glass in the streets of Seattle
has transformed the World Trade Organi-
zation into a popular icon for the unregu-
lated globalization that tramples human
values on every continent, among rich and
poor alike.
—William Greider,
“The Battle Beyond Seattle”
When thinking about the WTO in
Seattle, we must first recognize that it
was designed by the Clinton Adminis-
tration as an image event. As politi-
cians and their advisers clearly under-
stand, with the advent of television,
dramatic visuals have become required
fare. For example, when then-Presi-
dent Bush wanted to announce clean
air legislation he traveled to Arizona to
use the Grand Canyon as a visual back-
drop. Seattle, export capital of the U.S.,
was consciously chosen as the scene
for Clinton’s triumphant procession.
Success was scripted, with Clinton as
the star in the heroic tale of free-trade
prosperity. The title of the production
was to be the “Clinton Round,” the
sequel to the founding “Uruguay
Round” in 1995. Corporate sponsor-
ship was secured, with companies such
as General Motors, Boeing, and Mi-
crosoft paying as much as $250,000 for
access to heads of state, ministers, and
delegates during the conference (Lean,
1999). Seeing the stage set, however, a
diverse range of activists decided it
would be the perfect opportunity to
launch their issues onto the public
screen.
In an example of the hypermediacy
of the public screen, the plan for Se-
attle was clearly laid out on the internet
and in alternative newspapers, hand-
bills, and flyers circulating in Seattle
for weeks before November 30th.3 Or-
ganizers anticipated that tens of thou-
sands of people would converge on
downtown Seattle and “transform it
into a festival of resistance with mass
138
PUBLIC SCREEN
nonviolent direct action, marches,
street theater, music and celebration”
(“Resist the World Trade Organiza-
tion” handbill).4 Even with extensive
discussions of nonviolent tactics, orga-
nizers expected violence—from the po-
lice. The rules of enactment were ex-
plicitly laid out. In their “colorful
festival” of civil and uncivil disobedi-
ence, the protesters would provide the
provocation and the violence would
come from the police.5 As anyone with
a television or access to a newspaper
during those few days in 1999 will
readily agree, the protest did not turn
out exactly as planned. The festival of
color was punctuated with black-clad
anarchists and the nonviolent direct
action was upstaged by images of
smashed windows, burning trash bins,
and brutal interactions with the police.
Both establishment voices and non-
violent activists denounced the vio-
lence, especially the symbolic violence
of the anarchists. (By symbolic vio-
lence, we mean acts directed toward
property, not people, and designed to
attract media attention.) The dominant
response lamented the violence as
drowning out the message of the non-
violent protesters. An editorial in the
Seattle Times opined, “It took thou-
sands of peaceful protesters to shut
down the opening ceremonies of the
World Trade Organization. It took only
a few hundred punks, vandals, and
self-proclaimed anarchists to turn
downtown Seattle from a festive Christ-
mas scene to a dump” (“WTO Seattle
becomes a playpen for vandals,” 1999,
B4). Activist Cathy Ahern complained,
“I am so disappointed how this turned
out. We had weeks of training how to
do this correctly. It was supposed to be
peaceful. . . . It’s been completely de-
stroyed. Our message is not going to
get out and I’m so mad” (as quoted in
JUNE 2002
Postman, Broom and Davila, 1999, p.
A13). Arlie Schardt, president of Envi-
ronmental Media Services, concurred,
“I just think it’s tragic that all the news
here is about a handful of anarchists
and not the tens of thousands of activ-
ists who conducted model marches”
(as quoted in Cooper, 1999, A 2). Such
criticisms fail to consider important el-
ements of politics and social change on
a global and televisual public screen.
The WTO protests are an instructive
example of the productive possibilities
of violence on today’s public screen.
By definition, the news is about what
is new, what is out of the ordinary. The
news is attracted to disturbers of order
and deviation from the routine. As the
news adage goes, “if it bleeds, it leads”
(Kerbel, 2000). Aside from bloodshed,
nothing fits these parameters more pre-
cisely than symbolic protest violence
and uncivil disobedience. In Seattle,
such acts served to highlight the lack of
citizen access and input in the WTO
decision-making process. These acts
also encouraged the police response of
tear gas and concussion grenades that
made for some of the most compelling
images coming from the WTO protest.
The symbolic violence and uncivil dis-
obedience worked together in a nu-
anced fashion. The non-violent protest-
ers served to provoke the police at
least as much as the anarchists did.
Indeed, police violence against non-
violent protesters performing uncivil
disobedience started before the anar-
chists acted. We suspect that the anar-
chists’ symbolic violence justified in-
tense media coverage of the police
violence because media framing often
portrayed the police violence as a re-
sponse to the anarchists. In other words,
the presence of the anarchists allowed
the media to provide some sort of ex-
planation, however inadequate, of a

CSMC
police force out of control. Police vio-
lence against activists at the IMF/
World Bank protest in Washington,
D.C. the following spring went largely
unreported. The event also lacked sym-
bolic anarchist violence. In Seattle,
then, symbolic violence and uncivil
disobedience in concert produced com-
pelling images that functioned as the
dramatic leads for substantive discus-
sions of the issues provoking the pro-
tests.
Since the civil rights and antiwar
protests of the 1960s, activists have
learned the lessons of images. They
understood Seattle as an occasion not
for warfare but for imagefare. The pro-
testers’ chants of “The whole world is
watching” clearly echo the 1960s. The
whole world did watch—not because
thirty thousand protesters gathered in
one location, but because uncivil dis-
obedience and symbolically violent tac-
tics effectively disrupted the WTO,
shutdown Seattle, provoked police vio-
lence, and staged the images the media
feed upon. An analysis of media cover-
age of the WTO protests reveals such
tactics as necessary ingredients for com-
pelling the whole world to watch.
TV Screens
Analysis of the television evening
news coverage for the first day of vio-
lence, November 30, suggests the pro-
ductive role of violence in social pro-
test on the public screen. Combined
coverage time on CNN, ABC, CBS,
and NBC increased by 26% from Mon-
day’s coverage and the placement of
the story improved from the third,
fourth, or fifth story to the lead or
second story. The opening images were
clearly ones of violence and conflict:
protesters smashing a Starbucks; po-
lice in sci-fi riot gear shooting tear gas
139
DELUCA AND PEEPLES
canisters and concussion grenades;
police roughing up protesters. Other
images did get through, though: thou-
sands in the labor march; environmen-
talists in sea turtle costumes; protesters
nonviolently blocking streets. Signifi-
cantly, the protesters’ criticisms of the
WTO received an impressively exten-
sive and sympathetic airing–the claim
that the WTO is an undemocratic orga-
nization with a pro-corporate agenda
that in practice overrules national la-
bor, environmental, and human rights
laws was broadcast to an international
audience. In addition to the power of
the images themselves, this airing hap-
pened in two ways. First, among the
images of violence were interspersed
quotations from the protesters. On
NBC, for example, dramatic images of
violence yielded to a female protester
declaring, “We’re just normal people
who are tired of the exploitation of the
multi-national corporations through-
out the world.” Second, the “breaking
news” stories focusing on violent im-
ages were invariably followed by back-
ground stories focusing on the issues
that make the WTO controversial.
ABC reporter Deborah Wong con-
cluded one such story: “For these pro-
testers, this single organization, the
WTO, has come to symbolize just
about all that is wrong in the modern
world. So in this global economy,
where bigger is better and only the
fittest survive, these people complain
they have less and less control over
their jobs and the laws which protect
their communities.” Such background
stories sought out the perspectives of
protesters. On ABC, a female protester
remarked, “There is a general dissatis-
faction here with corporate culture, ab-
solutely, and we’re not going to have
that slammed down our throats.” CBS
interviewed unemployed Mary Fleure
140
PUBLIC SCREEN
of the United Steelworkers of America,
who explained, “We’re just being swal-
lowed up by corporate greed. We can’t
compete. I can’t feed my family.”
To think that the WTO protests
would have been lead stories and would
have received such extensive airtime
without symbolic violence (there was
difficult competition from mass graves
in Mexico) is to neglect the dynamics
of the news media. Far from discredit-
ing or drowning out the message of the
WTO protesters, the symbolic vio-
lence generated extensive media cover-
age and an airing of the issues. Compar-
ing television coverage in Seattle with
succeeding protests in Washington,
D.C. and Qatar is suggestive.
The pattern of TV evening news
coverage reveals that although the ma-
jor networks (CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC)
expected a significant story in Seattle,
they did not anticipate the extent of the
protests and the outbreaks of both anar-
chist and police violence. The Sunday
and Monday nights preceding the
opening day of the WTO meetings
received 10:40 and 13:10 minutes of
airtime, respectively. Tuesday, the first
day of protests and violence, saw an
increase in coverage to 17 minutes and
the WTO was the lead or second story
on all four networks. On Wednesday,
when the extent of Tuesday’s “may-
hem” became clear, coverage reached
28:30 and the WTO protests were the
lead story on all four networks. On
Thursday, the WTO remained the top
story on three of the four networks and
garnered 16:40 minutes of coverage.
On these nights, most reports followed
the two-part structure already illus-
trated in the analysis of the Tuesday
coverage: an opening story with a fo-
cus on the violence followed by a back-
ground story to cover the substantive
issues of the protesters.
JUNE 2002
After Seattle, the next major global-
ization event was the World Bank/
International Monetary Fund (WB/
IMF) spring meetings in Washington,
D.C. The coverage pattern was almost
the reverse of that in Seattle and sug-
gests the crucial role of violence in
garnering time on the public screen.
On the Saturday and Sunday preced-
ing the Monday opening, the WB/IMF
protests were the lead story on six of
the seven broadcasts (NBC did not
have a Sunday evening broadcast) and
received 10 and 13:20 minutes of cov-
erage, respectively. Coverage peaked
on Monday with the opening of the
meetings. Although receiving 17:30
minutes of coverage, the WB/IMF pro-
tests were not the lead story on any
network. Notably, due to a variety of
factors, there was no active anarchist
presence and much less police vio-
lence. Although the meetings and pro-
tests continued on Tuesday, there was
no coverage at all that evening. Appar-
ently, without violence or the threat of
violence, the protests were not even
worthy of coverage despite the signifi-
cance of the issues being discussed.
This pattern has repeated itself at other
globalization events and protests. The
most recent round of WTO meetings
were held November 9 –14, 2001.
Doha, Qatar was purposefully chosen
as the site in order to reduce the likeli-
hood of protests and violence. That
goal was achieved, as there were just
small protests and no violence. Conse-
quently, there was absolutely no TV
evening news coverage by the four
major networks.
Although these three events included
varying contextual factors, the results
are very suggestive. In the Seattle and
Washington, D.C. cases, preliminary
coverage was modest. When violence
broke out in Seattle, coverage esca-

CSMC
lated. When dramatic violence did not
occur in DC, coverage disappeared. In
Qatar, where violence was ruled out a
priori by the choice of venue, television
coverage was nonexistent. Clearly,
then, the symbolic violence and police
violence did not detract from more
substantive coverage of the protesters’
issues. On the contrary, without such
violence or its threat, TV news cover-
age quickly evaporated.
Newspaper Screens
Interestingly, The New York Times in
their lead editorial comes to the same
mistaken conclusion as the peaceful
protesters: “The violence and property
destruction diverted attention from the
basic point the demonstrators sought
to make–the need to reform the
W.T.O.’s procedures and values”
(“Messages for the W.T.O.,” 1999, p.
A30). The editorial, in its remaining six
paragraphs, details the grievances of
the non-violent protesters, argues for
the need to respond substantively, and
concludes: “vital issues affecting the
health and prosperity of the planet de-
serve a visibly fair hearing” (p. A30).
This editorial serves as a microcosm of
the newspaper coverage generally: the
violence serves as a dramatic lead that
opens into expansive and extensive
coverage of the issues surrounding the
WTO protests.
As was true for television, images
played a dominant role in the print
media coverage of the WTO protests.
Headline stories were accompanied by
quarter-page images (some as large as
ten and a half inches across) of police
and protesters facing off in teargas-
fogged streets. From November 28th,
1999 to December 2nd, 1999, The New
York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles
Times, and USA Today ran sixty-five
141
DELUCA AND PEEPLES
images of the WTO convention and
related protests in downtown Seattle.
Of those sixty-five images, the vast ma-
jority, forty-one, were uncivil disobedi-
ence shots. Eight were of peaceful pro-
tests. Ten of the pictures documented
the negotiations of the delegates, the
proceedings taking place in the conven-
tion, and the address of President Clin-
ton. Three images were of the anar-
chists and their actions. This emphasis
on images supports notions of remedia-
tion and hypermediacy—viewers wit-
ness the events in Seattle through the
public screens of both their televisions
and newspapers.
Prior to the anarchists’ symbolic vio-
lence, the uncivil disobedience, and
the violent police response of Tuesday
November 30th, newspaper coverage
was fairly limited (thirteen images and
twenty-four articles). Judging by the
number of articles covering the WTO
convention (three on the 28th, 12 on
the 29th, and 9 on the 30th), the newspa-
pers’ interest in the protest was begin-
ning to wane by the morning of the
30th until the violence in the streets
shifted the coverage dramatically. The
aggressive direct action protests and
symbolic violence (which intensified
the police response) catapulted the pro-
tests into national headlines. For the
first time, on December 1st all four
newspapers ran front-page images of
the convention, each opting to display
pictures of the violent interaction be-
tween police and protesters. Fifteen of
the images that accompanied the eigh-
teen articles covering the WTO were
of acts of uncivil disobedience or of the
violent police response. Two images
were of the anarchists and their ac-
tions. Two images were of the conven-
tion proceedings. Although violence
was a focus of the photographs and the
lead stories, the papers reported criti-
142
PUBLIC SCREEN
cisms of the WTO and the predomi-
nantly peaceful character of the pro-
tests was emphasized. This trend
continued on December 2nd, with the
four newspapers running a noteworthy
sixteen images of uncivil disobedience.
If we are thinking of the newspapers
through the metaphor of the public
screen, then the front page becomes
particularly important. Out of thirteen
front-page images during the days of
protest, eight were of uncivil disobedi-
ence, two were of peaceful protest, two
were of the convention proceedings,
and one was of an anarchist.
This attention to the conflict outside
of the conference not only increased
scrutiny of the action of the protesters
and police, but also increased cover-
age of the WTO in general. For ex-
ample, The New York Times ran two
articles on the WTO on November
28th, four on the 29th, four on the 30th,
seven articles, editorials and letters to
the editor on December 1st, and a re-
markable fourteen documents on De-
cember 2nd. The shocking close-up of
a woman’s bleeding face on A1 in the
L.A. Times directs readers to A18 where
another image of protesting in the
streets draws readers’ attention to the
column, “WTO: What’s at Issue?” The
column lists and briefly explains the
major issues facing the trade ministers
in Seattle: agriculture, Uruguay round
assessment, anti-dumping measures, la-
bor and environment, WTO reform,
intellectual property and China (Iri-
tani, 1999). The New York Times makes
a similar move on the 1st, creating a
chart listing “Who’s Protesting and
What They Object To” in the first
column and “What They Want” in the
second (“Behind the Hubbub in Se-
attle,” 1999). The article focuses solely
on the issues of worker, environmen-
tal, and consumer groups. A similar
JUNE 2002
dynamic was at work in the Washington
Post and USA Today. “This weird jambo-
ree” inspired USA Today to detail the
issues of unions, environmentalists,
steel workers, food-safety advocates,
and poor countries (“Cover Story: This
weird jamboree,” Cox and Jones, 1999,
p. 1A). Far from stealing the limelight
from the legitimate protesters, the com-
pelling images of violence and disrup-
tion increased the news hole and drew
more attention to the issues.
This increase in coverage can be
compared to the coverage of the WB/
IMF protests in Washington, D.C. the
following spring. Police cracked down
on activists before the start of the con-
ference by closing down protest head-
quarters and making preemptive ar-
rests. These preventive strikes by the
Washington, D.C. police curtailed most
of the symbolic violence and direct
action seen on the streets of Seattle.
Backing our claim that the violence in
the streets of Seattle actually produced
more media coverage, the reporting
on the WB/IMF conference did not
spike as it did in Seattle. For example,
in The New York Times coverage re-
mained modest as the conference went
on: three articles April 15th, six on the
16th, six on the 17th, six on the 18th,
and three on the 19th.
In even starker contrast to the pro-
test in Seattle was the recent WTO
meeting in Qatar, where the protesters
who did attend were reduced to hand-
ing out anti-globalization pamphlets.
The entire WTO-Qatar coverage in
The New York Times from November
10th to November 15th 2001 was less
than that of December 2nd, 1999 alone
(thirteen documents). None of the ar-
ticles graced the front page of the news-
paper and nearly half the documents
(six) were in the C section of the paper.
The Los Angeles Times gave the talks

CSMC
even less attention, with a mere six
articles covering the convention. This
again reinforces our claim that the
World Trade Organization and its far-
reaching agreements fall below the
level of consciousness of most media
organizations in the absence of the
compelling images constructed through
the symbolic violence and uncivil dis-
obedience that marked the convention
in Seattle. As we found in the televi-
sion coverage, such protest actions did
not detract from the message. On the
contrary, they increased the visibility
and extensiveness of newspaper cover-
age of the protesters’ criticisms of the
WTO.
Screen Effects
The WTO protests accomplished
much. On an immediate level, ordi-
nary citizens excluded from the meet-
ings managed through protest to affect
those meetings and contribute to their
failure. As European Union trade com-
missioner Pascal Lamy admitted,
“What’s happening outside is having
an effect on the negotiations” (quoted
in Sanger and Kahn, 1999, p. A14). At
a more general level, on the difficult
terrain of a corporate-dominated pub-
lic screen, thousands of global citizens
managed to turn a summit dedicated to
streamlining the world for corporate
profits into an unruly “forum” on hu-
man rights, environmental standards,
and social justice in the emerging new
world. In exposing the often arcane
issues of trade policy to the glare of the
media, the protests provoked a debate
over free trade versus fair trade. Public
discussions about trade are now consid-
ering environmental concerns as well
as profit concerns, human rights as
well as property rights. Indeed, Presi-
dent Clinton was moved to echo many
143
DELUCA AND PEEPLES
protester concerns in his speech to the
WTO. Clinton called for economic jus-
tice, worker rights, human rights, envi-
ronmental protections, and an open
and accessible WTO (1999). This pub-
lic discussion has continued. The Ameri-
can Prospect’s recent special issues on
globalization and its critics, The Face of
Globalism (Summer 2001) and Global-
ism and the World’s Poor (Winter 2002),
are examples of some of the fallout of
Seattle.
On a global level, the Seattle pro-
tests have sparked an international pro-
democratic globalization movement
that has staged protests in Washington,
D.C., Prague, Quebec City, Salzburg,
Genoa and other cities around the
world. A front page story in the Wash-
ington Post prior to the WB/ IMF meet-
ings opened: “The last time opponents
of global capitalism confronted the
ranks of domestic law enforcement—in
Seattle, Nov. 30 to Dec. 3—the results
were clouds of tear gas, volleys of rub-
ber bullets and the makings of a mass
protest movement whose energy and
appeal have surprised even some of its
organizers. Round 2 is scheduled for
April 16 and 17 in Washington.”
Though the article dismisses the anar-
chists as “vandals” and “looters” “run-
ning amok,” it also admits that they
have changed the topography of the
political terrain: “Last year, as every
year, a demonstration was called dur-
ing the IMF and World Bank spring
meetings in Washington. Twenty-five
people showed up.” A veteran critic of
the World Bank and IMF remarks,
“Something has changed. We may
fancy ourselves good organizers, but I
don’t think we could have planned for
this” (Montgomery and Santana, 2000,
pp.1, 5).
In provoking an international mael-
strom over globalization, activists have
144
PUBLIC SCREEN
accomplished a substantial political
achievement. The activists in Seattle
and since have been able to link sweat-
shops, union-busting, human rights vio-
lations, environmental degradation,
and poverty as consequences of corpo-
rate globalization. In short, they have
unified farm and environmental and
union and anti-colonial groups into a
voice that has effectively named corpo-
rate globalization as a problem and site
of struggle, not an inexorable natural
process. The activists have punctured
the claims of corporate globalization to
universality and to inevitability by giv-
ing voice to those left out.
Finally, the symbolic violence and
uncivil disobedience of protesters ex-
posed the violence of the state and
transnational capital as the allegedly
progressive haven of Seattle cracked
down with a show of force worthy of
1960s Birmingham or Los Angeles.
The trashing of civil liberties, not
Starbucks, may be the lasting image
of Seattle. Violence often helps fo-
ment activism and form community
(Browne, 1996). In addition to expos-
ing the violence of the state on behalf
of corporate interests in Seattle, in chal-
lenging the WTO the protesters have
sparked a conversation about the vio-
lence of global corporations in their
daily practices. A smashed Nike store-
front dims in comparison to the vio-
lence of sweatshop labor around the
world. Yes, violence is disturbing. But
for people excluded by governmental
structures and corporate power, sym-
bolic protest violence is an effective
way to make it onto the public screen
and speak to that power. Such sym-
bolic protest violence is often a neces-
sary prerequisite to highlight the non-
violent elements of a movement that
might otherwise be marginalized in the
daily struggle for media coverage. In
JUNE 2002
the “Battle for Seattle,” symbolic vio-
lence helped make real the protest
chant “Whose world? Our world!
Whose streets? Our streets!”
Dense Surfaces: Contemplating Image
Events
As the preceding content analysis
suggests, the symbolic violence and
the uncivil disobedience fulfilled the
function of gaining the attention of the
distracted media. Counter to charges
by peaceful protesters, then, such im-
age events did not drown out their
message, but enabled it to be played
more extensively and in greater depth.
Media coverage of this issue was not a
zero-sum game. Uncivil disobedience
and the anarchists’ actions expanded
the totality of coverage. If we take im-
age events seriously as visual discourse,
however, we cannot simply reduce
them to the function of gaining atten-
tion for the “real” rhetoric of words. It
is our claim that image events are a
central mode of public discourse both
for conventional electoral politics
(Dahlgren, 1995; Donovan and
Scherer, 1992; Gronbeck, 1995; Jamie-
son, 1988; Postman, 1985) and alterna-
tive grassroots politics in an era domi-
nated by a commercial, televisual,
electronic public screen (Szasz, 1995;
DeLuca, 1999). We must consider im-
age events, then, as visual philosophi-
cal-rhetorical fragments, mind bombs
that expand the universe of thinkable
thoughts.
Image events are dense surfaces
meant to provoke in an instant the
shock of the familiar made strange.
They suggest a Benjaminian sense of
time, where any moment can open up
on eternity, any moment can be the
moment that changes everything, the
moment that redeems the past and the

CSMC
future. And it is all there on the surface.
In a familiar city, Seattle, home of the
Mariners, computer geeks, airplanes,
rain, and coffee, a familiar place, Star-
bucks, the national neighborhood cof-
fee shop, is shattered by a hammer,
everyday object and sign of national
industriousness. The familiar made
strange, the shock of recognition that
the familiar is not necessarily innocu-
ous, the hint of the “banality of evil.”
The chain of targets reinforces the mes-
sage: Nike Town, Old Navy, Mc-
Donalds, Banana Republic, Planet Hol-
lywood (for a detailed explanation of
the choice of targets, see Hawken,
2000).
This is made clear in the intentions
of the anarchists. Though intentional-
ity cannot dictate meaning or effect, it
can help us glimpse possible surfaces
of the multi-faceted image event. In a
13-minute 60 Minutes II report on “The
New Anarchists,” reporter Scott Pelley
frames the story with these opening
words: “Who were those masked men
and women in Seattle? Those violent
demonstrators who attacked down-
town, toppled a police chief, and
wrecked the Clinton Administration’s
cherished trade conference?” The story
itself consists mostly of stunning video
of the protests (shot by the anarchists)
and of interviews during which the
anarchists explain their positions. Af-
ter images of people in black shattering
storefronts, the reporter asks, “What is
the point?” An anarchist responds,
“Economic incentive to not hold meet-
ings like that at all. Psychological incen-
tive to reconsider the kind of society
we live in that fills our world with
Starbucks and McDonalds.” The psy-
chological impact is emphasized again
in the words of an anarchist that close
the story: “You stare at a television and
you see logos and you’re in a daze and
145
DELUCA AND PEEPLES
these symbols pop up everywhere in
your life. When that is shattered, it
breaks a spell and we’re trying to get
people to wake up before it’s too late.”
These comments display an acute
appreciation of the public screen and
image events. The anarchists’ image
event of shattering windows obeys the
rules of the public screen. It both par-
ticipates in and punctures the habit of
distraction characteristic of the contem-
porary mode of perception. It partici-
pates in order to be aired—it is brief,
visual, dramatic, and emotional. It
punctures to punctuate, to interrupt
the flow, to give pause. It punctures by
making the mundane malevolent, the
familiar fantastic.
Charting the Public Screen
The point of this essay has been to
explore the constraints and opportuni-
ties of the public screen, a current place
for participatory democracy. It is in-
cumbent upon activists, academics, in-
deed, all citizens of the world, to under-
stand the new topography of political
activity. Under contemporary condi-
tions, the public screen is the essential
supplement to the public sphere. In
comparison to the rationality, embod-
ied conversations, consensus, and civil-
ity of the public sphere, the public
screen highlights dissemination, im-
ages, hypermediacy, spectacular pub-
licity, cacophony, distraction, and dis-
sent. We have focused on the image
event as one practice of the public
screen because it highlights the public
screen as an alternative venue for par-
ticipatory politics and public opinion
formation that offers a striking contrast
to the public sphere. Our account, how-
ever, is not an exhaustive treatment of
the public screen. This is true even
with respect to Seattle.
146
PUBLIC SCREEN
The public screen includes the pun-
dits on talking head TV, whose politi-
cal discourse is molded as much by the
requirements of the public screen as by
the rationality of the public sphere. It
includes the staged campaigns of elec-
toral politics, managed by contempo-
rary wizards of oz such as Michael
Deaver, Lee Atwater, and James Car-
ville. It includes sitcoms and other en-
tertainment TV, where national “dis-
cussions” on race, class, feminism, and
sexual identity take place on Cosby,
Roseanne, Ally McBeal, and Ellen. It in-
cludes films that deliver the definitive
verdict for public memory on such key
moments as the Holocaust (Schindler’s
List), World War II (Saving Private
Ryan), the Kennedy assassination ( JFK ),
and the 60s (Forrest Gump).
The public screen includes the adver-
tising and public relations of corpora-
tions, arguably the dominant discourses
of our time (Ewen, 1996; Beder, 1997).
This statement rings truer when one
considers how the structure of newspa-
pers in the United States is built around
advertising and public relations. News-
papers (as well as TV news) are finan-
cially dependent on advertising, with
the news hole dependent on the
amount of advertising. Consequently,
as a rule advertising comprises at least
50% of page space in most newspapers.
Though not as visually obvious, public
relations releases comprise much of
the news in newspapers and television.
For instance, one study found that more
than half of the Wall Street Journal’s
news stories were based on news re-
leases (Beder, 1997, pp. 112–113, 116 –
117). The enormous expenditures of
corporations on advertising and public
relations are evidence of the impor-
tance corporations attribute to the pub-
lic screen. McDonald’s and Coke, own-
ers of two of the most recognizable
JUNE 2002
icons in the world today (rivaling the
Christian cross), annually spend over
$1 billion and $800 million, respec-
tively, on advertising alone (Farley and
Cohen, 2001, p. 26). It is worth noting
that advertising and public relations
become dominant discourses with the
advent of 20th Century mass communi-
cation technologies—the very same
technologies that Habermas argues
contribute to the decline of the public
sphere.
Even the conversation of book cul-
ture is centered not in the New York
Review of Books but on the public screen,
as acclaimed novelist Barbara King-
solver laments while on book tour:
Can modern literary success really come
down to this, an author’s TV persona? In a
word, yes. . . . but what criteria that could
possibly fit in a fifty-eight-second TV spot
will guide them to an informed choice?
The quality of a book’s prose means noth-
ing in this race. What will win it a mass
audience is the author’s ability to travel,
dazzle, stake out name recognition, hold
up under pressure, look good, and be witty–
qualities unrelated, in fact, to good writing,
and a lifestyle that is writing’s pure nem-
esis. . . . Where would we be now if our
whole literary tradition were built upon
approximately the same precepts as the
Miss America competition? Who would
win: Eudora Welty or Vanna White? (1995,
pp. 163–164).
This essay is an opening sketch in a
needed exploration of the conditions
of possibility for rhetoric, politics, and
participatory democracy in the techno-
industrial corporate-controlled culture
that bestrides the planet. As Kingsolv-
er’s dismay displays, measuring con-
temporary discourse by the criteria of
an idealized public sphere and roman-
ticized past merely produces despair
and nostalgia. Such dismay and nostal-
gia are characteristic reactions of crit-
ics of the contemporary “corrupted”
 147

CSMC DELUCA AND PEEPLES

public sphere, which always falls short
of an imagined golden past, a Lake
Wobegon polis. A public sphere orien-
tation inevitably finds current discourse
wanting.
Thinking about rhetoric, politics, and
culture through the prism of the public
screen, however, enables a seeing of
the world anew. Pro-democratic global-
ization protests, TV sitcoms, Holly-
wood films, advertising, and public re-
lations do not represent lack, multiple
signs of the decline of civilization. In-
stead, thought through the metaphor
of the public screen, such practices are
productive of new modes of intelli-
gence, knowledge, politics, rhetoric, in
short, new modes of being in the world.
It is not a simple seeing, however. The
descriptor “new” is not attached with a
moral meaning of “good” or “bad;”
rather, “new” is an analytical term
marking the emergence of difference.
Similarly, the concept “public screen”
is neither working within a moral
economy nor positing a normative
ideal, but is opening a space for retheo-
rizing the places of the political. The
public screen images a complex world
of opportunities and dangers. This com-
plexity is evident in the very term “pub-
lic screen.” In the move from public
sphere to public screen, retaining the
term “public” is problematic. The air-
waves in the United States are by law
the property of the public, but they are
leased in such a way that media compa-
nies own them for all intents and pur-
poses. The Walt Disney Co. need not
grant us a soapbox from which to air
our views. Although the airwaves are
privately controlled territory, they now
function as the sites of public space,
much the way a shopping mall does in
the stead of the town square. Clearly,
in many ways this is unfortunate for
democracy (McChesney, 1999; Boggs,
2000). In addition, both theoretically
and practically the very distinction be-
tween public and private has eroded.
Still, the public screen, though pri-
vately controlled, is public. The com-
plexity of the public screen warrants
neither bemoaning a lost past nor cel-
ebrating a technological utopia. The
charge for critics is not to decry a
lacking present or embrace a naive
future. The charge for critics is to chart
the topography of this new world. !

Notes
1
Our choices of the terms “fair trade” and “democratic globalization” to describe the protests is a
political and intellectual move designed to work against the labeling of such protests in the mass
media as “anti-globalization” or “anti-trade.” Such media labels are the first step to dismissing the
protesters as Luddites, Nativists, simpletons, or unruly college kids who simply are against things
and do not understand the realities of the world. Our terms recognize the specificity of the protests,
the comprehensiveness of the critique, and the global nature of this activist movement.
2
Although Habermas is credited with the term public sphere, concern over the public has a long
history that can be traced at least to Aristotle. The 1st Amendment of the United States can be read
as a theory of the role of the public in a democracy ( Jhally, 1989). In the first half of the 20th
Century, John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, and Hannah Arendt were important theorists of the
public in a mass-mediated democracy.
3
The following analysis focuses on televison and newspaper coverage. This is largely a practical
decision. Internet information is notoriously ephemeral. Sites that had extensive WTO protest
coverage now have, at most, abbreviated archives (zmag.org; indymedia.org). Since we argue that
the public screen and its technologies are characterized by hypermediacy and remediation, the
ephemeralness of internet material is not analytically decisive.
4
The organizations responsible for planning the direct action and printing the literature were all
148

PUBLIC SCREEN JUNE 2002

identified as cosponsors: Direct Action Network, Global Exchange, Rainforest Action Network,
Ruckus Society, Project Underground, National Lawyer’s Guild, Green Party (Seattle), Earth First!
(Seattle), Adbusters, Center for Campus Organizing, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El
Salvador, 50 Years is Enough, Industrial Workers of the World, and Mexico Solidarity Network.
5
Uncivil disobedience includes such tactics as verbal harassment and blocking streets and
buildings in the hopes of provoking a response and creating an image event and is in contrast to
peaceful protests like marches. Besides being more disorderly, it is also qualitatively different from
the respectful civil disobedience espoused by Martin Luther King Jr., though the latter is often
designed to provoke a violent response. King’s civil disobedience was founded on love of one’s
opponents and predicated on the belief that one’s opponents were fundamentally good and could
be converted from their erroneous practices. Democratic globalization activists are motivated by
the irreconcilable conflicts between the goals of capitalist corporate globalism and the values of
democracy, fair trade, and environmental sustainability.

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Received January 1, 2001
Accepted February 27, 2002